Use Google Home Mini as Bluetooth Speaker, How To

You can now use Google Home Mini as a Bluetooth Speaker due to firmware and Google Home app updates in 2017. In this post, we show how to connect your tablet or phone to this speaker via Bluetooth, and transmit audio to the speaker for room-filling, surprisingly awesome sounding playback given how small the Mini is.

We’d like to be able to connect (pair) the Google Home Mini smart speaker to an iPad Air tablet, such that the speaker becomes a Bluetooth speaker, allowing us to play any audio that the iPad is playing, through the Mini. You might do this if you’re watching a Netflix movie or playing your Amazon music library on your iPhone, but wish to have louder, and over all better sound for it than what you get via the speakers built into your phone / tablet. You wish to enjoy the full sound of your Mini Google speaker for all this content.

Use Google Home Mini as Bluetooth Speaker

1. Connect All Devices to the internet

Make sure that both your tablet and your Google Home Mini are online and connected to the internet.

2. Turn Bluetooth ON

Enable Bluetooth on the source device that you’re pairing with the Google Mini. In our case, we’re pairing from an iPad Air.

Then, and assure that you see the “Now discoverable as” message, as shown next.

iPad Bluetooth Discovery Mode Screen, showing Bluetooth is ON.

3. Next, on the Tablet, Run the Google Home App

On my iPad, this app appears on the third home page, as pictured next.

Google Home App entry, as shown on the iOS home screen. Use Google Home Mini as Bluetooth speaker.

The Google Home app home screen then displays, as pictured next.

Google Home app on iOS, displaying its home screen, with the hamburger menu control highlighted.

4. Then, tap the Hamburger Item

Find the hamburger menu control near the top left corner of the Google Home app home screen. This brings up the main menu window, as shown next.

Google Home App 2017, showing the Home screen with Devices menu item highlighted. Use Google Home Mini as Bluetooth speaker.

5. Tap the Devices Menu Item

This brings up the list of Google Home devices that the app knows about, as shown next.

Google Home Mini Speaker, as displayed in the Google Home App, showing in the Devices list, with its Device Menu location highlighted.

6. Tap the Hamburger Menu Link for the Mini Speaker you’re Pairing

Find the control menu (hamburger) item pointed at by the purple arrow in the last picture. The hamburger menu opens, as shown in the next picture.

Google Home Mini smart speaker, as displayed in the Google Home App, with its Settings menu item circled. Use Google Home Mini as Bluetooth speaker.

7. Tap the Settings Item

in the hamburger menu as displayed in the previous picture, with the purple circle around it. You then see the Device Settings screen for the specific Google Home Mini speaker device displayed on the previous screen, whose specific setting options are shown on the screen shown next. In our case, that device is named Office Speaker.

Note that we’ve scrolled down to the Device Settings section on this screen to find the Paired Bluetooth Devices option, as circled in the next picture.

8. Tap the Paired Bluetooth Devices Item

as circled in the previous picture. The Paired Bluetooth Devices screen then appears as shown next, where we could select a Bluetooth device from a list of devices that we’ve previously paired with, had we ever paired with any before. Since we have not, the screen is almost entirely blank.

9. Tap the Enable Pairing Mode Link

This puts the Google Home device we’re working with into Bluetooth discovery mode. That is, it will now show up when other in-range devices scan for Bluetooth Devices. Confirmation of this is shown by a black bar momentarily appearing at the bottom of the Paired Bluetooth Devices screen, as shown next.

10. Go to the Bluetooth Settings Screen

Find Bluetooth Settings somewhere in the Settings app on your phone or tablet.

On our iPad Air, we hit the home button, tapped the Settings app, and then tapped Bluetooth on the left side of the screen, to reveal the following screen.

iOS Bluetooth Found Devices list, showing our Google Home Mini speaker, that is named Office Speaker, circled. Use Google Home Mini as Bluetooth speaker.

11. Next, Tap the Desired Device in this List

In our case here, we wish to pair theOffice Speakerdevice, as circled above.

Then, if all goes well, your Mini plays a short burst of musical chord, and pairing then occurs. Your paired device then moves up from the Other Devices list to My Devices if you’re using pairing with an iOS device, as shown next for our case; the purple circled Office Speaker device.

12. Return to the Paired Bluetooth Devices Screen in the Google Home App

There, you’ll now find that the Google Home App had added the source device (your phone or tablet) to its known Bluetooth devices list for the Mini, as illustrated in the next picture. Our pairing source device is called Tom’s iPad.

Google Home App 2017, displaying its Paired Bluetooth Devices history screen, showing our Tom’s iPad device as having paired with the Google Home speaker. Use Google Home Mini as Bluetooth speaker.

At this point, all your tablet’s generated sounds would play on your Google Home Mini smart speaker. Pairing is complete.

You would unpair your speaker from a source Bluetooth device by saying, “Okay Google, disconnect” or “Hey Google, disconnect.” Google Home Mini allows you to unpair your speaker from the source by either issuing these voice commands to it, or by going into the Bluetooth settings on your source device, and breaking the connection from there.